[rohrpost] Flusserian Philosophical Friday with Erick Felinto, 20.05.10 3pm, Berlin

[Annie Goh]

***Ankündigung auf Englisch - Veranstaltung in englischer Sprache ***

Flusserian Philosophical Friday with Erick Felinto
Friday 20.05.2011, 3pm, Vilém Flusser Archive

Flusserian Philosophical Friday (FPF) is an international research  
colloquium open to anyone interested in reading and discussing the  
works of Vilém Flusser. These events are held in English.
Location: _vilém_flusser_archive, room 208, Grunewaldstr.2-5, 10823  
Berlin

Erick Felinto
"Of Animals and Stones: From Benjamin's 'Unmensch' to Flusser's  
"Bichos'"
(Posthumanism and the Metaphor of Natural History)"

Abstract:
Vilém Flusser's Vampyroteuthis Infernalis reenacts and actualizes the  
time-honored tradition of a mental experiment that purports to efface  
the boundaries between man and animal. This ancient conceptual  
device, known in Baroque times as physica naturalis, seeks to  
illuminate the world of culture by means of its approximation with  
the world of nature. Instead of opposing poles, nature and culture  
become reflecting mirrors where man can acknowledge his ties to  
nature and the animal kingdom. More than just a rhetorical trope, the  
so-called allegory of natural history comprises what could be defined  
as a "philosophy of animality," espoused by thinkers such as Walter  
Benjamin, Gilbert Simondon and Jacques Derrida. In Vampyroteuthis,  
Flusser resorts to a strange marine creature in order to elaborate a  
sophisticated meditation on human existence and our relationship with  
the technological apparatuses we incessantly devise. The goal of this  
talk is to examine the recent history of the allegory, tracing its  
developments in the works of contemporary scholars, such as Siegfried  
Zielinski, Manuel de Landa and Vilém Flusser himself. Moreover, it  
investigates the applicability of the "philosophy of animality"  
within the field of art and film theory, suggesting an approach to  
filmic experience that focuses on the "material" aspects of cinema  
and regards the spectator's body as a site for the translation of  
images into affect and sensation.

Bio:
Erick Felinto is a full professor in the Department of Media Studies  
at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of five  
books on topics such as cyberculture, cinema studies and comparative  
literature. He holds a masters degree in Communication Theory from  
the Federal University of Rio and a PhD in Romance Languages and  
Linguistics from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). He is  
currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Universität der Künste Berlin.